Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch

Our 2026 Marketing Resolution

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What if the most powerful marketing tactic you’ll use this year has nothing to do with ads, funnels, or budgets?

In this Maven Monday, Brandon Welch and Caleb revisit a 90-year-old insight from Dale Carnegie that still outperforms most modern marketing tactics... and almost everyone overlooks it.

This episode isn’t about scripts, hacks, or manipulation. It’s about attention, respect, and the small human moments that quietly open doors, deepen trust, and change conversations.

If you sell, lead, manage people, or build relationships for a living, this is one of those ideas you’ll hear once and start noticing everywhere.

Simple. Timeless. Uncomfortably effective.

#MarketingPodcast #BusinessGrowth #SmallBusinessMarketing #EntrepreneurMindset #LeadershipDevelopment #SalesPsychology #BrandBuilding #CommunicationSkills #PersonalBrand #BusinessAdvice #MavenMonday #MarketingStrategy #RelationshipMarketing

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Host: Brandon Welch
Co-Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!

Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Brandon Welch:

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is a Maven Monday. I'm your host, Brandon Welch, and I'm joined by my co-host, Salib Aj. He got called that one time.

Caleb Agee:

I did. Salib. A good story.

Brandon Welch:

Always a good time. Longstanding client. Emailed for months and months. Yeah. Called the office, said, Can I talk to Salib? And I said, We don't participate in that sort of thing.

Caleb Agee:

We don't have we don't have a Salib.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So speaking of names, today is a simple episode, but it is a legendary episode built on wisdom from the late great Dale Carnegie. And I think it has to be uh top five marketing tactics ever. Like ever. So and we waited till like episode 168 to bring it to you. So what were we thinking? Yeah. So um hey, the power of somebody's name is simply uh the most uh potent, um uh seductive, interesting thing you could probably use in any form of communication. Um we are innately wired to care about ourselves more than we care about other things. And when somebody invokes your name, you just immediately know that it is about you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

So that is a that is a dopamine hit. That is an attention getter. Think about all the times you're in a room and somebody says your name when it's not even your name. It's like instant every you can't you can't shut that down.

Caleb Agee:

Oh, you can hear it from across you can hear it from across a crowded room. You hear your own name over the whole murmur of the crowd. Yeah. You're like, oh, somebody's talking about me.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So this is the place where we help you eliminate waste in advertising, which almost all waste in advertising has something to do with time and attention. Uh, we do that so you can grow your business and you can achieve the big dream. And that is something we take very seriously around here. We built an entire company off of this weird obsession with owner-operated companies and you doing all of the things that um entrepreneurs and dreamers do. And that sounds awful kumbaya and maybe a little bit uh NPR, uh, but that is that is who we are, and that's what we're unapologetically about. So if you are here for the first time, welcome. We are here to help you get more with less and do more with less so you can change the world through your small business.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, and we have a really simple but important piece of that today, uh, which is a story that comes from How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is 90 years old. It was written in 1936, so it's just about 90 years old. Dale Carnegie tells of a salesman who he had constantly lost deals, couldn't figure it out. He he had the right pitch, he thought. He his product was priced right. You know, there's nothing wrong with the with the pitch itself. But um, he went to a dinner party and he noticed something. Everything changed after this dinner party. He noticed that there was somebody greeting people on the way into the party, and he would use the guests' names.

Brandon Welch:

By their name.

Caleb Agee:

By their name. Caleb, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're here. And every time that person in a conversation used that person's first name, their face lit up. It's such a simple thing, but just the observational moment that he had.

Brandon Welch:

Whoa, this is such a master of the small moments of the small things.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. He smiled, they smiled, they leaned in, and so the salesman took the lesson to heart. And instead of focusing on the clothes, he was worried about his pitch, all the right saying all the right things, getting all the details right, he focused on the person. And he made it really personal, personal to them to learn and remember, especially their name. And you can go deeper than that, maybe into details about them, but most importantly, their name. And uh the results were that his sales conversations were naturally longer, people were listening more, the doors that had been closed opened wide up because he knew their name, he knew who they were, and nothing else, none of the other factors changed. His product didn't change, his pitch didn't change, his price didn't change. He simply remembered their names.

Brandon Welch:

I have a confession. Okay. This is something I need to get better at.

Caleb Agee:

I would like to confess the same. Yeah. I'm working on it. This that's one of my things for this year. I was literally thinking about that.

Brandon Welch:

Yes. Well, next year. This year. This year this next year. This this coming year. This coming year. In the coming year ahead. Yeah. Um 2026 starts today. Yeah. So uh I don't know what it is. I have no, I don't make any excuses for it, but uh sometimes sometimes uh it it feels it's really guilty to walk away from something you know the person, you've maybe even had multiple interactions and just the recall. So that is something I'm committed to. Call it a resolution, call it a habit. Uh, but I've been studying this habit, and um I just pulled some advice from some of the best books and best people, and there's lots of great YouTube con content, and there's lots of great hacks. Uh, but it it's occurred to me that this should not be a hack or a tactic. No, because you you can tell when somebody is like a hundred percent Dale Carnegie and they're just trying to mimic his hack book, which is not ever what his intentions were. Uh his entire um platform was really just slowing down and being more authentic and being uh looking for the human connection before all other things. And we tend to look at this and go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh remember somebody's name and my sales close rate goes up 15%. And I don't think that's anybody on this podcast. We don't have opportunities listening here, but I think it is important. Uh I I've pulled down seven tactics I'm studying. And then the first one is your mindset and your posture. This is really just an exercise of, I think, gratitude. I think it's like you're you are realizing like there's there's a whole room of people, there's a reason they were placed on your path today. Uh, there was a unique outcome that could happen just by you interacting with him. This could be maybe the first time and last time you ever see them, and that could be the thing. Or this could be first of millions of times you get to talk and have thoughts. Um, but think about that for a second. That might that mindset, that posture, you're like, I'm going into a room, and for me, over the years, and had doing so many networking things and so many, like it's just not uncommon for me to be around a lot of people. You tend to like take that for granted. And it's like you go somewhere else in the world where people are a little different, and you like you will instantly crave your people in the rooms you're allowed to be in. Uh, but just think of it from um, man, hopefully a place of gratitude. Like, I get to go in, and these are unique human beings with unique families and unique ideas and purposes. And let's just start there. So, number one, pause before you are about to go into a room. For me, it would be probably that moment in the car, instead of rushing in and you know, jumping in the crowd. You're going, okay, I get to be with these people today. That's number one mindset going into the room. Um, I think no duh moment, number two is just ask with intention. What is your name?

Caleb Agee:

Yep.

Brandon Welch:

Um I think so often it's either given to you freely when you're not waiting for it, but make it make it your goal to be the first person to ask somebody's name instead of to jump jump right in.

Caleb Agee:

Or or to not make it just the you know, the common part of the setup. Yeah, it's not just like the beginning of your conversation. Your name is the traction. It it's actually something you are getting and taking to heart.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. My goal is not to find out what you do, where you're from. My goal is to find out your name. So I can assign something to your unique position in this world and in this life, in this room, and in this moment today, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

Brandon Welch:

So ask with intention, what is your name? Carter, the Nate guy. Uh Nate's out today. We have Carter the camera guy. Uh number three, repeat it as soon as you hear it. Carter. I like that name. Carter, that's strong. Or don't say that. That could be the that could be an awful thing to say in the wrong context. Carter, cool. Good to meet you, Carter. Uh there I said it three times, right? So uh just repeat it. That's uh that's one of those things you'll find in all the advice books on this. Uh if it's unique, I think this is a sub-tactic. Now I wouldn't ask, um, now uh now John, how do you spell that? Uh actually John could be with an H or an N. Yeah. Uh you wouldn't say, you know, Dan, how do you spell that? Is that with a you know, uh with an I with those little things under it over it or whatever? You would say, but if it's a unique name, say, oh, do you spell that with a Y or an IE? That's just an another granular, you've got your focus on that for another four times. Then you can picture the letters in your mind. Yep. So you might ask how you spell that. So that's tactic number four. Uh use it two times more before you leave the room. Hey, I was just talking to Caleb over here. I just met my new friend Dan. He spells that with an A-N, you know. Yeah. But uh use it two times more before you leave the room. These are just like you're thinking about this is my goal when I hear somebody's name new. Uh obviously write it down. You can put it in your phone, and it's I think at some point in time that would have been rude. I think it's actually pretty commonplace just uh put it in your phone. Put it in a maybe even text it to yourself real quick. Yeah. Um and then um or maybe when you get back in the car or whatever, write it down. And then uh send a follow-up email, text, or maybe even a social invite so that you have later that day you have some like recall. Recall and extra context to how you met that person.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. A couple of things I do in the write it down category. One, if I'm in a meeting at the top of my notes, whether on my computer or with pen and paper, I write the names of everybody from left to right in the room. Just a weird thing, especially if we have a meeting with six people on the other side of the table. I'm gonna do that real fast. The other thing, I have Notion in my phone, and it actually does a great job at that. It makes little um databases of, you know, little tables of information. I actually have one that's like a personal Rolodex basically. And um, I write down their name, where I met them, and then like a little fact about them so that hopefully if I'm like, what is that guy's name next time? I can go and look and the fact maybe like the where and the fact maybe connect the two for me, and I'll be like, Oh, he was that guy he was wearing a red hat when I saw him. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and that helps me just recall so that I can um do him the kindness of using his name next time. Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

So love it. So studies have shown that people remember faces two to three times more often than names. So this is if this is you, if you are us and you're struggling with this too, join us in this new year, yeah, and get better at name. We're gonna do this. Name calling, right? Name calling. But um, yeah, that that is that is the episode, guys. Like, yeah, let's just be better communicators, let's be more grateful for the people that landed in our life today. And of course, that's going to translate into better sales, um, better marketing, better uh influence over our circles. And uh, we all um should want to be the ones that are known, liked, and trusted the most in our category. And so if I meet you this year, uh test me on this and uh make sure that I remembered membered your name. Uh, but that is that is a calling for me. Yeah. And uh, we'll close it out with um Dale Carnegie reminded us remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. So we'll leave you with that. This is our last episode of the year. Um last week we talked about 26 marketing tactics, and uh, those are really good. We put a lot of work into that one. Um, you should go watch that one if you haven't. Uh, if you've been listening to us this year, we want to thank you.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, thank you so much.

Brandon Welch:

Whatever your name is.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, whatever your name is.

Brandon Welch:

Uh thank you so much for giving us your time, your trust, uh, your ideas. We've talked to so many of you on email and in our mastermind. And uh it's just it's a joy for us uh to be here, not because we're selling anything or getting anything from you other than getting to fulfill our mission, which when we know that there's views on the other side of this and shares and comments and all of that, we know that we are on mission. And that is one of the greatest gifts is knowing that you're doing work that matters. And so it's an honor. Yeah, it is an honor. Thank you so much. And uh, I will say uh to this next year, our cheers to you is so that you can do more work that matters to you and the people you're serving. We will be back here every week doing our very best to help you do that, get more of that impact and more of that growth and more of that goodness in a world that is not always full of it. So that's our promise to you. Thank you for being here. We'll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions because marketers who can't teach UI are just a fancy lie. Happy New Year's